The Words You Need to Hear
by HardyBoyz4Eva
Summary: Companion to "I Hate You". The Shield Slash. Dean-Centric. One-Shot. After filming the last SmackDown before Survivor Series, Dean realizes his feud with Bray Wyatt is causing unnecessary problems in his family. Can an impromptu heart-to-heart with Kelly be beneficial to both of them? Full list of warnings inside. Please Review!


**Disclaimer:** I don't own anyone other than Kelly.  
><strong>Rated:<strong> T  
><strong>Warning(s): <strong>Slash, Threesome, Storyline Fanfic, Past Mpreg, Dean-centric, etc.

**A/N:** Okay, so I _know _that I _should_ be updating _Letters of Hate_, and I _totally_ plan on having an update for all of you tomorrow. Until then, I hope that these one-shots will be able to tide you over :)

Just an FYI, this story is based off of the recent storyline between Bray Wyatt and Dean Ambrose, which was taken to a whole new level on SmackDown yesterday. So, on that note, on with the fic!

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><p>"...and they lived happily ever after. The end." With that, Dean shut the oversized book of fairytales and placed it flat on his lap.<p>

Kelly looked up at him with half-lidded eyes, clearly losing the battle against falling asleep. Dean had changed her into her Disney Princess themed footie-pajamas back at the arena, and now, tucked neatly away into her cocoon of blankets and pillows, it was really only a matter of time before sleep claimed her. Not that it wouldn't be met with all of the protest her little body could muster.

Leaning forward, Dean smoothed silky blonde locks out from in front of her face. The little girl managed a weak, drowsy smile. Things had been significantly calmer over the last month or so, since it was just the two of them. Since both Dean and Roman were still attempting to rebuild their relationship with Seth, they'd all agreed that it would be best to room separately for a little while. The kind of trust that Seth had violated could not be regained in one day, but none of them were willing to completely abandon what they had once had, either. And since Roman was out of commission indefinitely because of impromptu surgery, it had just been Dean and Kelly.

"Sleep well, Princess. Sweet dreams." He kissed her forehead and watched as her eyes fluttered closed, coal black lashes touching ivory skin.

"G'night daddy." Dean couldn't help but smile at the way that she slurred her words when she was sleepy.

Satisfied that she was well on her way to dreamland, Dean rose up off of the corner of the bed and stretched. Casting one last glance in her direction, he started toward the door, left hand reaching out to kill the lights on his way out. The light hadn't even been off for a second before he heard a terrified _squawk _come from the bed. Immediately, the light was back on. Kelly was sitting up in bed, blankets and hair in complete disarray. She clutched her dolly with a trembling hand.

"What's the matter, Princess?" Kelly had never had this kind of reaction to him turning out the light before.

"Please don't turn out the light! Kelly is scared of the dark!" He knew that she was _really_ upset when she started to refer to herself in the third person. And then, much softer, but no less intense, "_Please!_"

"Princess, you have a night light right over there." He pointed to the _Beauty and the Beast_ night light that was plugged into the far wall.

_"Please!"_ Kelly repeated. Tears were shining in her bright blue eyes, which were now wide and fearful.

Dean cocked his head to the side, but wisely didn't press the matter further. Instead, he merely nodded. "Alright, I'll leave the light on tonight. Will that make you feel better?"

There was a weak, uncertain nod that Dean didn't know whether or not to believe. His hand left the switch and her relief was practically palpable. After a moment, she settled back down in her mess of blankets and pillows, her dolly clutched protectively to her chest. Dean watched her for a moment, unsure of what to do. In the end, he merely waited until she fell asleep to take his leave, leaving her bedroom door open - just in case.

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><p>Dean stared at his reflection in the blank computer screen, noting the puffiness of his eyes and the not-yet dry tear tracks on his cheeks with no small measure of disgust.<p>

He hated to appear weak. It had taken an unbelievable amount of inner strength to hold it in so that he didn't break down in front of Kelly, and it had been that much harder when the little girl had started to cry as well. Originally, when he'd first agreed to this storyline, he hadn't realized that the wounds, which were almost two decades old, were still painfully fresh. It was like he was reliving it all over again, and there was no way in _hell_ that he'd willingly sign up for _that_ shit.

It was one thousand times harder trying to deal with the massive storm of emotions _alone_. While he certainly was not the type to wear his heart on his sleeve, or even to willingly discuss his emotions, Seth and Roman (Seth especially) had always had this way of making him feel better without him even having to ask. Dean looked at the clock - he was actually supposed to be video-chatting with Roman right now. However, unwilling to allow Roman to see him like this, he was holding off on the call for as long as possible.

Adding to all of this commotion was Kelly's newfound fear of the dark. It had undoubtedly been borne from Dean's close involvement with Bray Wyatt as of late, and he put the blame for that on himself. He hadn't been thinking about anyone other than himself when he signed that contract, and one could argue that he hadn't really been thinking about himself, either. The contract was one of those things that really shouldn't have been taken at face value, because the damage that it was doing and would continue to cause was unacceptable.

Apparently, Dean had taken too long to call Roman, so Roman had taken it upon himself to call him. Without thinking, Dean accepted the call, "Hey," he started off simple, hoping his voice wasn't shaking _too_ terribly.

_"You're crying."_ Roman's flat, monotonous tone had never sounded more cruel.

"Well, shit. I guess the cat is out of the bag now." Dean attempted to make a joke out of it, even managed to laugh a little, but it was painfully fake and Roman saw right through it.

_"Will you tell me what happened?"_ Roman asked.

"Do I have a choice?" Dean countered smartly.

_"Of course you do."_ From the tone of his voice, Dean really didn't think that he was going to like his "choices". _"You can either tell me now, or I can call Seth and find out from him."_

Dean frowned, before scrubbing at his cheeks with the sleeve of his shirt. "You play dirty."

Roman laughed, but didn't deny it. Instead, he offered, _"I play to win."_

Dean took a moment to really look Roman over. Although they'd talked as recently as the night before, Roman looked undeniably different. He was _swimming_ in the middle of a bed designed to comfortably fit three, with the blankets pulled up to his knees. Black pajama bottoms were slung low on his waist, revealing a heavy-duty white gauze bandage that was carefully taped down over his bellybutton. He was shirtless, and before Dean could question how he _wasn't_ freezing his ass off, he heard the heater kick on in the distance.

Finally, Dean relented. "It's this stupid fucking storyline, is all. It is getting to me a lot more than I thought it would. And it is getting to Kelly too."

Silence. Then, _"How so?"_

"She seems to have developed a fear of the dark." Dean said, looking and sounding rather flustered. "The night light wasn't enough and I don't know what to do. My mom," here, he paused, swallowing hard, "She would've just told me to get over it."

For as much as he didn't like to talk about his own childhood, he realized that Kelly deserved so much better than what he had. But he was also able to acknowledge that that he did not have the proper tools in his "survival tool kit" to handle such a situation on his own. Much of his own experience with such matters involved being told to "shut up" or to "grow up". He refused to be that distant, unreachable figure for his own child. But how could he not be, when that was all that he knew?

_"Have you told her that you love her?"_ Roman asked suddenly, breaking Dean out of his thoughts.

"What?" Dean couldn't help but be mildly offended. Just because Kelly wasn't his biologically didn't mean that he loved her any less.

_"I think that it will make both of you feel better if you do." _He said. Then, _"Oh, don't give me that look. We all know how much you love her... sometimes, you just have to say it."_

It was then that Dean realized that he'd been so consumed by anger and frustration that he hadn't loved much of _anything_ as of late. He sighed, "I really suck at this parenting thing."

But Roman shook his head. _"No, you just haven't had the best examples to go off of. You're already proving just how great a parent you are by _not_ heading down that same road."_

Dean sighed, "I love her more than anything."

Roman grinned, _"Then tell her what you _both _need to hear."_

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><p>Kelly was still awake. Dean was not surprised.<p>

Sitting down on the edge of the bed, he gently placed a hand on her leg. She took her eyes off of the ceiling and focused them on the man across from her. It sounded so cruel to say that, in her six years of life, he'd never once told her that he loved her. That being said, he'd also never missed an opportunity to show her exactly how much she meant to him. Having come from a family where actions spoke louder than words - he could feel the unfamiliar weight of the brass knuckles being placed into his waiting hands - it had simply never occurred to him that Kelly might get the wrong idea by not hearing him vocalize how he felt for her.

There was a moment of silence, and then, he merely opened his arms. Quickly, Kelly clambered out of the mess of blankets and fell into his embrace, burying her tear-stained face in his chest and sobbing about a nightmare that was keeping her from being able to sleep. He rocked her gently, smoothing a hand over her tangled locks and rubbing her back in soothing circles. Tears were slowly falling from his own eyes as well, but this time, he didn't feel weak. He just felt _empty._ It was like this storyline had taken some part of him and broken it, and he had no clue how to fix it.

And so he just decided to throw all caution to the wind and ask, "You know that Papa loves you, right, Princess?"

"Yes." She answered immediately. Her answer was almost _too_ quick, however, and he could feel how her little body tensed in his arms. And then, a little softer, "N-No."

Dean sucked in a deep breath, feeling that hole within him grow impossibly bigger. He pulled her tighter to him, placing a kiss on the crown of her head. "Princess... _I love you_. Do you know how excited I was to find out that you were gonna come into our lives? You are _the best_ thing to ever happen to me. I'm sorry I don't say that enough."

"R-Really?" The uncertainty in her tone was enough to break Dean's heart.

"Really." He affirmed. "I love you to the moon and back, Princess. And from now on, I'll make sure that you _never_ have any reason to doubt that." Grabbing a tissue, he gently cleaned off her little face. "And that starts now. How about we grab some ice cream and you come on over and sleep with me tonight? I'll chase the nightmares away."

Kelly's eyes widened. She remembered how Dean hated when she'd climb into bed with them in the morning, because she'd always push one of them off of the bed, or hog all of the blankets, or knee someone in the ribcage... But she held back, still a little uncertain. "But... Kelly is a big girl..."

"Hey, big girls and big boys can have nightmares too." Dean said with a shrug.

"Papa has nightmares?" She seemed skeptical.

"All the time." And this was the painful truth. He _did_ have a lot of nightmares, and there had certainly been a spike in them since he'd been sleeping alone. They were mostly abstract and intangible, totally forgotten when he opened his eyes. But some were darker, scarier, where the dream world blended with reality. Those left him shaking.

She seemed to think this over for a moment. Big girls should be independent and unafraid, but her Papa was big and _he_ still had nightmares. Maybe it was like Dean had said - nightmares can strike people of any age. "Can I have strawberry ice cream?"

Dean smiled. "You can have any kind that you want."

A half-hour later, they were both in bed. Kelly had confessed to him that her bad dream had stemmed from the Hell in a Cell pay-per-view, where Bray Wyatt had capitalized on a moment of darkness in the arena to hurt Dean. She was afraid that, should her room be dark, Bray could come out of nowhere and hurt one of them. Dean had thought about assuring her that he was fine, and that Sunday, come Survivor Series, he would prove once and for all that he was the better man and would send Bray back to wherever the hell he'd come from. But he'd held himself back.

His childhood had been riddled with empty promises. He could very well tell her that he was Superman, and that, no matter what Bray threw at him, _he was invincible_. But it was one thing to walk into the ring with that mindset, and a completely different thing to tell a child that. Because a child was just innocent enough to believe it, and if he were to then get hurt, any trust or faith that they would've had between them would be gone. And so he told her the only thing that he could - he'd keep her safe from the things that go bump in the night, because he was her knight in shining armor and would defend her with his life.

Kelly smiled at him sweetly, all the fear gone from her eyes. "You're the best, Papa."

Dean's heart swelled and the hole that was eating away at him suddenly _vanished_. Perhaps _this_ was what Roman had meant when he had said that both were desperate to hear something from the other. He kissed the crown of her head again. "I love you, Princess. Good night."

"G'night, Papa." And with that, she curled into his side and fell asleep. And Dean, feeling lighter than he had in almost a month, found that sleep came easily as well.

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><p><strong>AN:** Just a closing note because I know a few people have asked - Kelly is biologically Roman and Seth's daughter. Devon is biologically Dean and Seth's daughter.

Thank you for reading and please remember to review!


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